Tag Archives: Saudi Aramco

The anti-immigration AfD party won 28 percent votes in the regional elections in September [File: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters]A city in eastern Germany has declared a “Nazi emergency,” saying it has a serious problem with the far-right.

Dresden, the capital of Saxony, has long been viewed as a bastion of the far-right and is the birthplace of the anti-Islam Pegida movement.

Councillors in the city – a contender for the 2025 European Capital of Culture – have now approved a resolution saying more needs to be done to tackle the issue.

But opponents say it goes too far.

What is a ‘Nazi emergency’?

“‘Nazinotstand’ means – similar to the climate emergency – that we have a serious problem. The open democratic society is threatened,” local councillor Max Aschenbach, who tabled the motion, told the BBC.

Mr. Aschenbach, from left-leaning satirical political party Die Partei, said he believed it was necessary to take action because politicians were not doing enough to “position themselves clearly” against the far-right. (BBC News 11/2)

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OUTRAGE AS AFD OBJECTS TO MIXED RACE CHILD

The mayor of Nuremberg in Germany has attacked a far-right party for “openly racist” comments about a teenage girl picked to be a Christmas gift-bringer.

A member of Alternative for Germany (AfD) attacked Benigna Munsi, who will open the city’s Christmas market. The teen was born in Nuremberg to an Indian father and a German mother. “You would laugh about it if you didn’t know these guys are serious, but you could cry about this level of hostility,” Mayor Ulrich Maly said.

He said there had been “idiotic comments” about previous children chosen for the traditional role of “Christkind” (Christ Child), but this attack had an “openly racist connotation.”

A now-deleted Facebook post by an AfD district branch said that German people were being eradicated like Native Americans.

“Nuremberg has a new Christ Child. One day, we’re going to go the way of the Indians,” it read. Another AfD member meanwhile provoked further criticism for writing online that the teenager’s “foreign” nose was a “slap in the face to friends of tradition.” (BBC, 11/4)

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MEXICAN CARTEL KILLS 9 AMERICANS

“Breaking news coming out of Mexico detailed the horrific cartel killings of an American family, which, astonishingly, The New York Times tried to pin on (get ready for it) fundamentalist religion. Specifically, the Mormon faith.

An American family living in Mexico was ambushed and massacred by a cartel, with three women and six children murdered. The scene as described by surviving family members is horrific:

“They described a terrifying scene in which one child was gunned down while running away, while others were trapped inside a burning car. Two of the children killed were less than a year old, the family members said. The car they were in with their mother was set ablaze.”

In one article, the family is described as being part of a “fundamentalist Mormon community,” while in another the spotlight is on the victims’ faith.

In fact, a quick Google search of the NY Times coverage of the tragedy yielded the following headlines on articles put up at various times during the day by the Times:

“9 Members of Mormon Family in Mexico Are Killed in Ambush,” “A Storied Mormon Family Reels After Mexico Murders,” “What We Know About the Killing of 9 Mormon Family” and “US Victims in Mexico Attack From Mormon Offshoot Community.”

In between these headlines, another mainstream media source, NBC, chimed in with its own coverage: “Slain U.S. citizens were part of Mormon offshoot with sordid history,” which detailed, well, the “sordid history” of the group which they called a “cult.” (Clarion 11/6)

COMMENT ON TWITTER — “Thanks @nytimes. For a second there, I thought it was the murderous cartel’s fault that six children were burned alive while their mothers were raped, then shot rather than Mormonism. Silly me.” (https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1191822530727829506)

Six children were murdered and this is how The New York Times chooses to cover it. Pathetic.

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NON-MEXICAN ILLEGALS INCREASING IN NUMBER

Border Patrol agents in San Diego arrested a historic number of non-Mexican migrants crossing illegally into the U.S. during the 2019 fiscal year.

“San Diego sector realized its highest number of apprehensions from countries other than Mexico in the history of tracking statistics for this population with a total of 27,255 arrests,” said Kathleen Scudder, acting deputy chief patrol agent for the San Diego sector.

To put that number in perspective, Border Patrol agents arrested 11,509 non-Mexicans during the 2018 fiscal year. Between 2009 and 2015, the average number of non-Mexican border apprehensions were 1,500, records show.

The majority of non-Mexican nationals apprehended came from Central American countries like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, she added. (San DiegoTribune)

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HOW MALAYSIAN AIRLINES 370 DISAPPEARED

“They didn’t follow protocol. They didn’t follow procedure. More could have been done. As a result of the inaction of the air force – of all of the parties involved in the first hour who didn’t follow protocol – we are stuck like this now. Every one of them breached protocol one time, multiple times. Every single person who had some form of responsibility at the time did not do what he was supposed to do. To varying degrees of severity. Maybe in isolation some might not seem so bad, but when you look at it as a whole, every one of them contributed 100 percent to the fact that the airplane has not been found.”

“And every one of them was a government employee.” (“Vanished: how Malaysia airlines flight 370 disappeared,” William Langewiesche, The Atlantic, July 2019)

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SOUTH AFRICAN VICTORY OVER ENGLAND IN RUGBY WORLD CUP

The Rugby World Cup victory by the Springboks on Saturday is inevitably being seen as a moment of national reconciliation, with people focusing on what it means for a black South African captain to hold aloft a trophy after leading a team that was once a potent symbol of apartheid.

For some, it is a holiday from the problems that plague us. Still, the events of the weekend have also exposed how some benefit from fanning divisions in society. For them, the sight of a team of people from different parts of our society beating the best in the world as a united team is bad news. And so they have to do everything they can to distract us and kill the moment.

The victory by the national rugby team on Saturday could not have been scripted better. Led by Siya Kolisi, a man from an incredibly poor background, a team involving players from most of our communities was able to comprehensively take apart a team many considered to be better than them. The scrums showed what happens when everyone pushes together. The moment when Makazole Mapimpi scored South Africa’s first try in a World Cup Final was full of genius and symbolism. As was Cheslin Kolbe’s logic-defying try just a few minutes later. (By Stephen Grootes, Daily Maverick, 11/4)

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SOUTH AFRICAN WATER CRISIS

As the Eastern Cape treasury last week made R120m available in drought relief for the province, several towns were running out of drinking water as more dams dried up and the province’s total remaining water dropped to 50% of capacity.

On Saturday a strict warning was sent to residents in eight towns in the Eastern Cape – Aliwal North, Mount Fletcher, Lady Grey, Ugie, Barkley East, Burgersdorp and Maclear – not to drink the water supplied by the municipality without boiling it first.

In an official notice, the municipal manager for the Joe Gqabi Municipality, Zolile Williams, added that residents must add a teaspoon of bleach to every 25 litres of drinking water to make it safe.

“We can no longer guarantee the quality of the drinking water supplied by the municipality,” the notice reads. (Estelle Ellis, Daily Maverick, 11/4)

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IRAN ANNOUNCES FRESH VIOLATIONS OF NUCLEAR DEAL WITH EXTRA, ADVANCED CENTRIFUGES Tehran’s nuclear chief says domestically made centrifuge in development is 50 times faster than those allowed under 2015 accord

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran on Monday broke further away from its collapsing 2015 nuclear deal with world powers by announcing it’s doubling the number of advanced centrifuges it operates, calling the decision a direct result of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement.

The announcement — which also included Iran saying it now has a prototype centrifuge that works 50 times faster than those allowed under the deal — came as demonstrators across the country marked the 40th anniversary of the 1979 US Embassy takeover that started a 444-day hostage crisis.

By starting up these advanced centrifuges, Iran further cuts into the one year that experts estimate Tehran would need to have enough material for building a nuclear weapon — if it chose to pursue one. Iran long has insisted its program is for peaceful purposes, though Western fears about its work led to the 2015 agreement that saw Tehran limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. (The Times of Israel, 11/4)

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WHY SO MANY ARE DEMONSTRATING Blame economics, demography, a sense of powerlessness . . . and social media

For anyone trying to follow protest movements around the world it is hard to keep up. Large anti-government demonstrations, some peaceful and some not, have taken place in recent weeks in places on every continent: Algeria, Bolivia, Britain, Catalonia, Chile, Ecuador, France, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Lebanon and more. On November 1st Pakistan joined the ever-lengthening roll as tens of thousands of protesters converged on the capital, Islamabad, to demand that the prime minister, Imran Khan, stand down within 48 hours.

Probably not since the wave of “people power” movements swept Asian and east European countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s has the world experienced such a simultaneous outpouring of popular anger on the streets. Before that, only the global unrest of the late 1960s bears comparison in terms of the number of countries swept up and the number of people mobilized. (Economist, 11/4)

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IMPACT OF GAY PRESIDENT IN MIDEAST

In an October 7, 2019 article on the website of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, Egyptian journalist and Muslim Brotherhood (MB) member Amer Shamakh wrote about the growing support for the LGBTQ community and same-sex marriage in the West, and in the U.S. in particular. Calling them “perversion” that is contrary to human nature and the monotheistic religions, he warned that if potential Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg became president, this would lead to a campaign of pressure on Arab countries to accept the LGBTQ community as normal, as it is perceived today in the West. Expressing concern that Arab leaders would capitulate to such pressure, he underlined that Islam views homosexuality as “one of the most loathsome deeds,” that “Islamic law instructs that those who carry it out be killed by burning, being thrown from a high place, or stoning,” and that the Prophet Muhammad himself even ordered that this be done. (MEMRI, 1/5)

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TO THE POINT

We are not witnessing a legitimate impeachment process, and certainly not any form of justice recognizable in America since the Massachusetts Spring of 1693. (Chris Farrell, Gatestone, 11/5)

The Deutsche Bank is supporting the imminent IPO (initial public offering) of the world’s largest oil company Saudi Aramco thus helping to consolidate power in the hands of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. On Sunday, the competent Saudi authorities gave the green light for the IPO, which will be executed in the first half of December and will flush double-digit billions into the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The PIF will play a central role in financing strategic domestic investments and buying strategic shares in foreign companies and will de facto be controlled by the Crown Prince personally. Experts agree that bin Salman is directly responsible for the murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul. Already years ago, the Deutsche Bank had financed deliveries of arms to Saudi Arabia, which were used in the war on Yemen. Along with other German companies, the bank participated in last week’s investor conference in Riyadh. (German Foreign Policy, 11/5)

Iran and its terror proxy Hezbollah are financing Mexican drug cartels, smuggling people into America and recruiting them (for pay) as sleeper jihadist cells. The recruits are mainly immigrants to Mexico from the Middle East, mostly from Lebanon where Hezbollah is based. The coordinated operation is part of Iran’s war on America. (Clarion Project, 11/5)

“As widespread protests plunge Lebanon into political crisis mode once again, we are reminded that multi-ethnic democracies in the Middle East aren’t exactly a model of good governance. Those looking for solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should take note, and this should give pause to advocates of the one-state solution.” (The Delusional One-State solution, MEF, 11/4).

There are reports on the Gatestone website (11/3) that Turkey is sending arms to Boko Haram, the terrorist group that operates in Nigeria and other west African nations. The terror group targets Christians. Observers have wondered how Boko Haram obtains sophisticated weapons. The Turkish connection answers the question.